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Health and Wellbeing

Building wellbeing and resilience across the ageing Italian community

Co.As.It. (SA) has partnered with the Wellbeing and Resilience Centre (‘the Centre’) within the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (‘SAHMRI’) to build wellbeing and resilience across the ageing Italian community.

The ‘PERMA’ dashboard of wellbeing is a positive psychology program which teaches skills across five key elements:

Positive Emotion

Engagement

Relationships

Meaning

Achievement

Each area of PERMA contributes to an authentic and sustained sense of wellbeing and research has proven that an increase in PERMA may increase resilience and give a boost to mental health.

The Wellbeing and Resilience Centre recently added three additional constructs to provide a more comprehensive measure of wellbeing, optimism and resilience. These are Physical Fitness, Nutrition and Sleep, resulting in a measure known as ‘PERMA+’.

Co.As.It. (SA) in partnership with the Centre have translated and delivered the PERMA+ program in Italian for the first time. This partnership has transferred capability to Co.As.It. (SA) to embed and sustain a culture of wellbeing and resilience that has since been shared across the Italo-Australian community. Co.As.It. (SA) is committed to:

Becoming a leader in building wellbeing and resilience in the ageing Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) community;

Further developing and refining the PERMA+ in Italian so that it may be utilized by other service providers or community groups;

Providing high quality training to community members and volunteers so that they may become wellbeing leaders or ‘champions’ in the Italo-Australian community.

There are a wide range of benefits associated with building an individual’s wellbeing and resilience. There are numerous studies that demonstrate that wellbeing interventions are effective in enhancing wellbeing outcomes – life satisfaction, gratitude, psychological wellbeing, resilience, hope, positive effect as well as reducing depressive symptoms, negative effect and pessimism.

Italian Seniors ‘Esercizio per Vita’ Exercise Program

In 2018 Co.As.It. (SA) launched the Italian Seniors ‘Esercizio per Vita’ Exercise Program in collaboration with The Society of St Hilarion Inc. Aged Care and the University of South Australia (School of Health Sciences).

The exercise program is tailored to the cultural and linguistic needs of ageing Italo-Australian community. The exercise program focuses on aerobic and strength training which has been shown to: